


The fish in the pond - or Why no one is in John Watson's league

by saneone



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Midlife Crisis, drunken conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 15:52:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9499082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saneone/pseuds/saneone
Summary: “No more fish in the pond?” Sherlock asks, as John is trying to sneak in after a perfectly ordinary evening at the pub. A night which Sherlock seems to think there is something interesting about.John just wishes Sherlock would leave him alone, and stop occupying his thoughts so much.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _“We’re just two lost souls_   
>  _swimming in a fish bowl_   
>  _year after year”_
> 
>  
> 
> Pink Floyd, “Wish you were here” (1975)

”No more fish in the pond?” Sherlock asks from his place on the sofa, startling John into a jump.  
  
“Hey Sherlock, I almost didn’t see you there”, John says, aiming for sarcasm.  
  
The flat seems pitch dark to his eyes. There’s no use anymore to try and sneak in unnoticed but he still doesn’t turn on the light. John knows the flat well enough to be aware of where not to put his feet.  
  
Sherlock though, could be anywhere at this point. Physically he hasn’t moved, he is still on the sofa as he was when John left. But mentally he’s unpredictable. One never knows where he is coming from, where he is at. And it seems to be John’s job to follow him around.  
  
Right now he’s not following. Or he has the feeling he might be, but with Sherlock one can never be sure so he chooses to ignore it.  
  
“You didn’t have to wait up, you know”, he says instead.  
  
It’s hard to tell if Sherlock is still sulking as he seemed to be when John left, or if he’s just stuck in thinking position. And it doesn’t make a difference to John anyway. Just because Sherlock intends to abstain him-self for the rest of his life doesn’t mean that everyone in this flat has to live like a monk. There’s no reason John can’t go out looking for company, even if his best friend doesn’t share his interest in romantic relationships.  
  
Sherlock seems to process his statement, or possibly something entirely different.  
  
“I’m hardly up”, he says, popping the ‘p’.  
  
“True”, John replies, now standing right in front of the laying form of Sherlock.  
  
There’s light coming in through the window, because the city of London never sleeps. Enough light that John can see his reply is making Sherlock smirk. And John knows, he just _knows_ , he’s going to start poking at something soon. Something John-related.  
  
“So, no catch then?”  
  
There he goes. God knows why it is of interest to Sherlock, the interest that John takes in other people.  
  
John’s legs ache and he’s very tempted to sit down in his chair, but he knows that if he does it will be a lost cause to make himself get up and climb the stairs to his bedroom afterwards. He will just remain there indefinitely.  
  
“You really need to stop with those awful fishing metaphors”, John says. “They are making me nauseous.”  
  
Although what is really making him feel dizzy is that Sherlock is trying to make conversation. And that is suspicious but John is too tired to figure out why. But there’s no doubt that’s what Sherlock is doing or he wouldn’t be asking questions. He would be telling him things instead.  
  
Sherlock lifts his head, rising on his elbow.  
  
“Breath on me”, he says and creates a circular motion with his hand under John’s mouth.  
  
John ignores that, but he does let out an exasperated sigh and asks:  
  
“Who are you, my mother?”  
  
Sherlock closes his eyes and then lies back down again.  
  
“Two pints of beer, one whisky and um… interesting, brandy.” He opens his eyes again. “Was she”, he grimaces before the next word, “nice?”  
  
It really makes him resemble Mycroft, the grimacing and the sarcasm intertwined.  
  
“My mother?” John tries in a vain attempt to distract Sherlock.  
  
“I already know about your relationship to your parents”, Sherlock drawls, “and that you would choose other words to characterise them rather than ‘nice’.”  
  
“Of course”, John says, and then because he just can’t help himself: “The whisky was a double though.”  
  
“And much needed”, Sherlock nods.  
  
“Impressive”, John says, aiming for praise even though he’s rather blasé when it comes to Sherlock’s skills. He’s trying to distract Sherlock but he’s not quite sure from what. “So, you’re not my mother then. I used to pop a minty flavoured chewing gum in my mouth when I came home after a party and she never noticed anything.”  
  
“I’m sure there were better catch at the parties in those days”, Sherlock says.  
  
John wills himself not to respond to that question, which is under his dignity. Instead he sighs non-specifically, before realising that is giving away to Sherlock exactly how much harder it is for him to pick up women these days.  
  
He seems to have taken a seat at some point during their conversation, because now he is seated in his chair. He finds himself rather inebriated.  
  
The darkness has somehow impersonalised Sherlock, made him an ethereal mind. It feels good, it feels like if there is warmth coming from Sherlock, and not just from his physical body. This is not a good combination – the alcohol, the warmth and John himself feeling the way he has been feeling lately. He should get a grip before he says something too personal.  
  
“Did you bin the…”, he says and motions towards the fridge, not quite being able to bring himself to take the words ‘toes with mould cultivation’ in his mouth. He specifically said it to Sherlock this morning, which ought to have been enough.  
  
“No”, Sherlock says. “I had no reason.”  
  
“I asked you to is no reason?” John says, and now it’s a good thing he sat down because this he really wants an answer to.  
  
He’s suddenly confident that this time he will get to the very bottom with this, and find out exactly _why_ it is that Sherlock can’t respect his way of doing things. He is struck by a clarity, the kind he sometimes gets when he’s been drinking, a revelation that there are things which need to be addressed and sorted.  
  
In his mind there is a direct link between the moments prior to this one when he has been struck by the same sense of clarity:  
  
The post-exam party after Anatomy which 60 percent of the class had failed and he was not one of them and it was not so much the realisation that he would make it through Med. school as it was the insight that he had not really dared to believe it up until that moment.  
  
The inclination to kiss Jenn S. whom he had been pining after for years at a house party the summer they both turned 16 – or maybe that was not a revelation but just alcohol-induced confidence. But the long moments following his decision bore that same lucid quality in his head, as he had time to thoroughly think through if it was his nature to live with unrequited love for someone who was obviously indifferent. Before she started kissing him back and his body was flooded by relief and something stronger.  
  
He also vividly remembers his first time being drunk at 15 and the odd feeling when the booze hit him glass by glass and he did not feel aggressive - on the contrary, content and giddy - and the thought occurred to him through the buzz that the anger didn’t really come from the bottle but must be his father’s own.  
  
Possibly there are more, but those moments stick out in his memory. As a light-trail of lucid moments, reinforcing his determination to make Sherlock see it his way.  
  
“But it bothers me when you don’t pick up after yourself”, he says calmly but possibly also pleadingly, the picture of his own suffering so clear in his head. “It is like you’re invading my” he gesticulates in a circular motion in an attempt to include the kitchen, the shared living space, his life “tidiness.” The word that comes out doesn’t quite capture the notion that is so clear in his head, but it will have to suffice. “It disgusts me to have to check if the food I intend to eat is not really human body parts!”  
  
Are there tears in his eyes? Maybe there are, there’s a moist sensation in the corners of his eyes.  
  
Sherlock looks at him. He seems almost taken aback, doesn’t he? If he’s managed to confuse Sherlock Holmes it’s a victory in itself, he really appreciates Sherlock being confused.  
  
Sherlock opens his mouth, he then closes it again. It should make him look stupid, fishlike, but he manages to do it looking both thoughtful and clever.  
  
He opens his mouth again and this time he says:  
  
“So what _was_ wrong with her?”  
  
But John won’t let that divert him, because Sherlock’s confusion was real and at last he is getting a reaction out of the man. There is a sense of finality in the air, as if this was the final and conclusive problem.  
  
And perhaps, John realises, that is exactly what it is: If they could only get this sorted, if Sherlock would only stop invading his life with all of his clutter and strange habits, then maybe he would stop occupying John’s thoughts too. Leave room for John to think about other people.  
  
John gives it another go:  
  
“At least the fridge should be restricted area. It’s the least I could ask of you, you know for sanity – sanitary reasons”, John says.  
  
”You weren’t going to bring anyone home nor were you going to get laid tonight, and you yourself had already seen the state of the toes and the rest of the kitchen”, Sherlock says. “So there really was no reason to throw out valuable research material, or at least it could wait until morning.”  
  
John regrets having had a seat. The determination is slipping out of him, and possibly also the clarity. He regrets sitting down, but then it was never his decision, he was pulled down by what felt like gravity or maybe something stronger.  
  
“You knew that,” he says, and it’s not even a question though it should have been, he’s deflated already. “You knew that for a fact, so why did I bother going out?”  
  
And that on the other hand comes out as a question. Though it shouldn’t have been one, since this is John’s area, his life actually, and if anyone knows the answer it should be him.  
  
Sherlock is still the one responding to it.  
  
“It obviously wasn’t worth your time, it never is”, he says surprisingly softly. “What was wrong with this one?”  
  
John feels gravity pulling on him more distinctly, this is a more firm pull than just his body getting tired. More like the weight of the world holding him down. It is peculiar isn’t it, how the laws of nature can at times seem without relevance to his life, non-affecting, and at times almost physically palpable in their impact. He’s turning 45 and he can’t deny it anymore, the effect it’s starting to have on his market value, being a middle-aged bachelor. Experienced, even competent – but even he wouldn’t want to hear his own anecdotes on a pub night. About stitching up men younger than himself, the life bleeding out of them under his hands, and the pointlessness of the war – of all of it to be honest – growing stronger on him day by day.  
  
“It was a regular pub night, not a date”, he tells Sherlock dismissively. Sherlock’s question annoys John, and it’s not just because Sherlock has got it wrong. Because then he would only be happy, wouldn’t he?  
  
“The brandy”, Sherlock says as if that would explain anything, and John must admit that he knows exactly what Sherlock is talking about, “but you didn’t particularly care for her in the end.”  
  
“Go on then, deduce it all. Tell me about my pub night.”  
  
And that’s exactly why it annoyed him, the question – even when Sherlock is wrong he seems to be simultaneously right, on some level even more right than John.  
  
“The double whisky”, Sherlock says, eyeing John up and down, “most likely an attempt to relieve the boredom. I’d say she should have been boring you to death, everything considered. But then people seldom bore you the way they deserve to, so that’s probably not it.  
  
No, you had low expectations from the beginning, your shoulders were slouching significantly already when you left the flat. You weren’t looking forward to going out, but in the vain hope of meeting someone you went to the pub almost as if it was a duty, one of your pointless household chores. So you gave yourself the whiskey as a reward when you were giving up – and that is rather contradicting behaviour, isn’t it? And so very telling in its own right.  
  
And that is when she came along, the woman, when you were already looking forward to calling it a night and head home.”  
  
John knows Sherlock is observing him. He’s not sure how much of him he can make out in the semi-darkness, but he’s probably giving away clues that he’s not even aware of just by sitting there.  
  
“Fishy of her to reel me in, don’t you think?” John says.  
  
Sherlock winces at the ghastly pun, and John smirks at him. There’s nothing he can do to hide the facts Sherlock is deducing, but at least he can make him suffer along with him as best he can.  
  
“So then you obviously ordered brandy for both of you”, Sherlock says.  
  
“Obviously”, John sighs.  
  
“With the specific purpose of impressing her”, Sherlock continues unperturbed. “And it was good thinking – not that brandy really is the sophisticated drink you think it is, but she would probably be as ignorant as you in that area, thus being subsequently impressed. Also I guess it must have had some sort of secondary”, Sherlock flails his hand around, “effect that helped you tolerate and possibly even appreciate the boring woman.”  
  
John frowns.  
  
“Why would she be boring?”  
  
“Who else would seek company in the local pub on a Saturday? You didn’t find her unattractive or, well, unsanitary, although your standards in _that_ area are somewhat exaggerated.”  
  
John snorts.  
  
“No, you didn’t find her unattractive,” Sherlock continues, “or you wouldn’t have bothered with her in the first place. So that means she must have been so boring that the local pub was the only place where anyone would take notice of her, and that’s the reason she goes there.  
  
Her hair is dyed blonde. Not professionally – the underlying grey makes the single hair on your dress shirt clearly fluorescent in the light from the window, in a way only the generic brands picked up at Tesco’s do. The dye is a discrete shade used by a woman aiming for an impression of respectability – not creativity. Someone who needs people to trust her in her line of work. The scent of her perfume – flowers and musk – is the odour equivalent of a pick-up line. But still it was applied carefully, as by someone habitually restraining her perfume dosage.  
  
She works in health care then, a nurse, considering her cheap choice of hair dye. So, doctor-nurse, a classic match. And you were, on some level, attracted to her. She was boring, but not boring enough for it to bother you. But for some reason she turned out not to be worth the effort. There was something about her that made you holding back.”  
  
Sherlock steeples his hands under his chin, his eyes narrowing as he inspects John.  
  
“Oh, for God’s sake! She was out of my league”, John spits out. ”Come on, just say it, I know you want to. She was out of my league, Sherlock, that’s what was wrong with her.”  
  
That shuts Sherlock up, it actually does. Why is it that John is so surprised every time his words have the effect he intends them to have on Sherlock? He doesn’t stay quiet for long though.  
  
“You have a ‘league’?” Sherlock says.  
  
John can hear the sarcasm in the word “league”, as clearly as if there were actual quotation marks around it.  
  
And now John knows – this is what is wrong with having this conversation with Sherlock, a conversation which he hasn’t chosen to have. It is what is wrong with having _any_ conversation with Sherlock really: He doesn’t take things at face value. Not even evident things, obvious things, social standards and norms accepted and established by everyone else.  
  
“Yes, Sherlock, everyone has. Well, it doesn’t apply to you of course, you can just dazzle people with your fake charm. With that arse in your perfect, well-fitted trousers and your unruly curls you can just go and sham your way through to anyone’s heart.”  
  
Sherlock goes perfectly quiet for a moment, before he asks.  
  
“You think my trousers are well-fitted? You said they were a posh show-off, isn’t that what you said?”  
  
”Don’t you dare to turn this into some fishing for compliments!” If the flat wasn’t so quiet, John would be shouting, the way he usually does during their arguments. Now he just barely raises his voice, but he thinks his intent is clear.  
  
”Fishing. Ha!” Sherlock says, but he’s not smirking. His eyes are looking at something on the other end of the room and he seems lost in thought.  
  
John is tempted to ask Sherlock not to wear the tight trousers around the flat, because that could really prove helpful for his peace of mind. But he strangles that impulse, not only because he knows it’s a lost cause but it’s also a discussion he really prefers not having.  
  
”Sod the trousers. They’re not important”, he says instead.  
  
That seems to bring Sherlock back to the conversation. He tilts his head and looks at John:  
  
“So… there was nothing wrong with her you say, but still she was underneath your standards?”  
  
John cannot be completely certain that Sherlock is being sarcastic, the question could also be based on genuine curiosity. It still pisses him off.  
  
“My God, Sherlock! She was in a league way _above_ my league!”  
  
This only prompts another question out of Sherlock:  
  
“Above?”  
  
“Yes, in a league whose hair isn’t greying, who doesn’t need a flat share to afford London, with more inspiring anecdotes to tell, and also which does not wear such ghastly shirts - as you yourself told me right before I went out tonight!”  
  
He means to tell Sherlock off, he means to sound utterly annoyed. It surprises him when he listens to his voice he finds he only sounds bitter.  
  
“I’m not being bitter, that’s really not it”, he says. ”I’m being perfectly realistic here, in full alignment with the facts. Tonight I have not met a single person who has wanted me, not even for a one night stand, that is the bitter truth.”  
  
He knows he is wallowing in self-pity now, and that somehow seems easier to go through with as they are sitting in the dark. This is where he usually ends up after a few drinks nowadays, in self-deprecative melancholy. That harmonic, content mood from his early drinking days seems to have passed and evolved into this.  
  
“Um”, he hears Sherlock’s voice.  
  
“What? What does that mean?”  
  
“Just ‘um’.” Sherlock pronounces the sound clearly and articulately, as if making an impersonation of someone else.  
  
“No. No I know you, that wasn’t just an ‘um’ – I know you, you wouldn’t say that.”  
  
“John, you’re being-“  
  
“As a response to this, I mean,” John interrupts. Okay, so maybe he is getting himself worked up, but it is not uncalled for. “You know something.”  
  
Yes, that’s it, isn’t it?  
  
“You know something I don’t”, he adds.  
  
“That could hardly be news to you, John”, Sherlock drawls.  
  
“No, shut up! You _think_ you know something I don’t, you git.” And isn’t that just another little tell, that Sherlock actually keeps his mouth shut as John attempts to make sense of this.  
  
“You think I was missing out, don’t you?” John says. “Well you should have seen her! She was clearly looking for someone better to come along, some fancier _catch_ as you put it.  
  
Half the time she was glancing at her phone, and the rest of the time she was scanning the crowd. Her mind was clearly elsewhere – I know this, I’ve picked up _some_ observational skills from living with you, you git. She tried to keep talking to me, to seem like she was interested, but she was really looking for someone else. Before she suddenly took off without a word after getting a text. It doesn’t take a genius to see that must have been the bloke she was looking for.”  
  
“Your reasoning is flawed in two ways, John”, Sherlock says, raising an eyebrow. “One – you are underestimating your own level of attractiveness to a potential partner, and two – as always you are also jumping to conclusions.  
  
Well, in this particular case even I might at first have overlooked some facts – one often does in the initial stage when dealing with professional deceivers – so that was only what could be expected from you.  
  
You say she left you for some other romantic interest, but with the clues at hand it is fairly evident that she had, in fact, other things on her mind. It’s obvious – if maybe not to you, John – that in addition to being a nurse, this woman is also a spy working for the British government. Or some other figment of my brother’s megalomaniac imagination.  
  
The reason she took off so suddenly was one of national security, life and death and so on. In truth, had the situation not been so urgent, it is likely she would have found you an interesting catch, possibly even a candidate for future marriage.”  
  
“You’re really something, you know”, John is shaking his head and doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ”That’s the most badly put together set of lies that you’ve ever told me. And that’s really saying something!”  
  
Sherlock doesn’t object when John calls his bluff. And why is he so insistent on that the woman wasn’t rejecting him, that he even allows himself to be caught lying?  
  
This is when it slots into place for John: The fact that this is Sherlock trying to hide something from him, trying to make something escape his attention.  
  
“Bloody hell, Sherlock, you _did_ see, didn’t you? You ponce, you goddamn _stalked_ me to the pub!”  
  
John stands up from the chair.  
  
“If you did you’d better tell me! Bastard!” he almost yells, looking down on Sherlock.  
  
It feels good to be the one looming for once. He turns on the floor lamp – he needs to see Sherlock’s face, his expression.  
  
“Ok I’ll tell you, just switch the light off.” Sherlock is shielding himself from the light with his hand, but John still had time to see that he didn’t look smug right now. On the contrary, he looked somewhat shaken.  
  
“No”, he says. He needs to see Sherlock, he is not going to fool himself anymore. He is not going to make any more confessions. “What did you do? Oh god, you didn’t interfere, did you?”  
  
“No”, Sherlock says, and sounds like he means it too. But John is finding it hard to believe him right now, and really, who could blame him?  
  
“Jesus, Sherlock, stay out of my… personal life!” He almost said love life, and wouldn’t that have been a laugh? It’s the lack thereof that is the very reason for him standing here, looming over his flatmate in the middle of the night, trying to find out what kind of damage has been done.  
  
As if there was anything to be damaged. Christ, who is he kidding?  
  
He realises he is swaying on his feet, he is either too tired or too drunk to stand up straight for any length of time. But he doesn’t want to let Sherlock off the hook by going back to his chair, so he sits down squatting next to the sofa.  
  
And God does he feel old doing that, outdated. Or possibly just out of shape. His legs don’t bend the way they used to and he needs to support himself with one hand on the cluttered coffee table.  
  
“John, the light”, Sherlock says, and suddenly his voice seems so close to John’s face that he can feel the vibrations from it.  
  
John takes a deep breath. The light is still on.  
  
“I… find maybe it’s for the best that I don’t tell you. Some things are better kept-“  
  
“Stop stalling Sherlock”, John sighs.  
  
“Okay. You will probably not approve, but.” He stops.  
  
“Yes?” John prompts. He is determinedly holding Sherlock’s gaze as he reaches out and turns off the light.  
  
“Well… the reason…”  
  
“Yes?” John nods, his attention not leaving Sherlock’s face.  
  
“The reason it never gets dark in London anymore is not the neon signs and street lights, as one would think, no it’s rather the pollution, all the particles in the air catching and reflecting the light from everything, _everything_. Car lights, street lamps, billboards, amplified a thousand times. Why would anyone need so much light? There is not _enough_ darkness in London, the night is turned into a constant dusk and one cannot escape the light –”  
  
John interrupts him: “Sherlock, you can’t distract me into letting this go.”  
  
“Fine.” Sherlock lets out an audible sigh. “I need you to close your eyes.”  
  
”You what?”  
  
“I just told you, John, it’s not dark enough”, Sherlock demands impatiently. And then, in a smaller voice, he adds: “Please.”  
  
And the please is not the reason John does it, it really isn’t. But he is rather curious as to if Sherlock might be about to apologise – because wouldn’t that be a rare and special occasion – or if he will just try to bolt, so he closes his eyes.  
  
“Go on then!” he prompts. The words have barely left his mouth before he feels a pair of lips on his own. The surprise knocks him out of balance and he falls to the floor.  
  
“Sherlock!” he calls out, and he hears that his voice is full of doubt. Then he sees a fleeing figure bolting across. Without thinking he grabs hold of his ankle. That stops Sherlock from running but he manages stay upright. John keeps a steady hold.  
  
He hesitates for just a moment, hand on naked foot. Then he grabs Sherlock’s dressing gown instead and starts pulling him down by the hem, inch by inch. Sherlock complies, he lets himself be pulled down until they are face to face. John still lying on the floor and Sherlock hovering just above him, supporting himself on his knees and hands.  
  
There’s that rare look of confusion on Sherlock’s face, but John can’t really cherish it this time, not when it mirrors so precisely what he himself is feeling. But he soldiers on through the doubt, because he is used to falling back on the contingency plan when all other points of orientation fail him.  
  
Not that he really has a contingency plan for this particular instance, but it resembles a fantasy he’s had enough times for his body to go into a sort of default mode. He grabs Sherlock’s neck, pulls him down and lets his lips cover Sherlock’s. The only response he can sense is that the man’s breath hitches slightly.  
  
It is nothing like the dates John has been on lately, though anatomically a mouth should be just a mouth. For some reason it rather makes him think of Jenn S. Not only for the realisation that his life as he knows it could well be going to the dogs this very minute, but also because that realisation has time to really hit him in the gut in the long seconds before Sherlock actually does start kissing him back.  
  
In reality, as it turns out, Sherlock tastes not only salt and human but also of old cigarette smoke – and that’s not at all the turn-off it should have been. John’s mouth loses itself in the motions, there are teeth and brief flickers of tongue. He doesn’t feel tired anymore, his body is flooded by the distinct feeling of blood rushing through his veins, his heart beating in his chest as if he’s just come out alive from a situation of lethal danger.  
  
And he could never in a million years have guessed that _this_ was where Sherlock was coming from, this was where he was at.  
  
John opens his eyes again, and there he is. Sherlock seems to have kept his eyes open all the time, gaze intent on John as if he is trying to deduce something. As if there was anything unclear about this situation?  
  
John stops the kissing, and Sherlock lifts his face from John’s, putting just a little bit of air in between their faces. He watches John warily – he is holding himself up on his arms and seems ready to scramble to his feet any second if John shows any sign of rejection.  
  
John is fast. In one swift motion he brings Sherlock down, who lands on top of him with a satisfying thump.  
  
“I’m not going anywhere, you bastard”, John says.  
  
As Sherlock takes up the kissing again, John thinks they’ll need to move this to a bed soon, because as much as he enjoys feeling Sherlock’s weight solidly against his frame he can feel the floorboards just as distinctly. It’s not doing his bad shoulder any favours to be lying on the floor making out like a teenager.  
  
This all proves Sherlock right about something again, doesn’t it? And John has never been happier about that than he is now: Sherlock really was right about this being an interesting evening.


End file.
